## Metadata - Author: [[Annie Chagnot, Emi Ikkanda, and Elizabeth Alexander]] - Full Title: How Lovely the Ruins - Category: #books ## Highlights - HUMAN BEINGS HAVE NEVER LIVED without song, across time and tribe. So poetry has always been necessary, and people have always made it, and shared it, and in some way lived by it. That is steady-state in human history. When language is degraded from the highest perches, and public words regularly carry meaning that reduces groups to crude and false stereotypes, the nuance and precision of poems is an ever more necessary tool for living. ([Location 260](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=260)) - Poems are how we say: this is who we are. Poems are heart and soul made legible. Poetry is ancient; poetry is the way peoples have carried their songs forward across culture and across time, saying this is who we are and this is where and what we come from. ([Location 263](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=263)) - Poems are where voices can join together and sing in a voice more powerful than one. Poems mark a trail of identities; poems laid end to end are a map of the human voice. ([Location 268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=268)) - Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind, wrote Gwendolyn Brooks, words that are always apt. I find that black elders offer the long view in ancestral hum: make a way out of no way, as they say. That genius. ([Location 273](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=273)) - Poems are handbooks for human decency and understanding. Poets hold water in their cupped hands and run back from the well because someone is parched and thirsting. The poem is a force field against despair. ([Location 277](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=277)) - THERE ARE BIRDS HERE Jamaal May ([Location 302](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=302)) - POEM Muriel Rukeyser ([Location 330](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=330)) - THE GUEST HOUSE Rumi TRANSLATED BY COLEMAN BARKS ([Location 376](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=376)) - DOVER BEACH Matthew Arnold ([Location 422](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=422)) - OUT BEYOND IDEAS Rumi TRANSLATED BY COLEMAN BARKS ([Location 449](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=449)) - WHAT KIND OF TIMES ARE THESE Adrienne Rich ([Location 459](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=459)) - MUSÉE DES BEAUX ARTS W. H. Auden ([Location 475](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=475)) - SCI-FI Tracy K. Smith ([Location 495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=495)) - “NINETEEN HUNDRED AND NINETEEN” W. B. Yeats ([Location 521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=521)) - DIFFERENCES OF OPINION Wendy Cope I HE TELLS HER ([Location 544](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=544)) - There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed. —ROBERT F. KENNEDY ([Location 605](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=605)) - PROTEST Ella Wheeler Wilcox ([Location 609](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=609)) - Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. —VÁCLAV HAVEL ([Location 676](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=676)) - EXPERIENCE Carl Sandburg ([Location 688](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=688)) - GLOBAL WARMING Jane Hirshfield ([Location 706](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=706)) - SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 W. H. Auden ([Location 711](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=711)) - I WORK ALL DAY… Pier Paolo Pasolini ([Location 838](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=838)) - PREPARATION Effie Waller Smith ([Location 854](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=854)) - GOOD BONES Maggie Smith ([Location 902](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=902)) - DIRGE WITHOUT MUSIC Edna St. Vincent Millay ([Location 916](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=916)) - FOUR IN THE MORNING Wisława Szymborska ([Location 932](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=932)) - Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. —RALPH ELLISON, Invisible Man ([Location 944](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=944)) - HOURS Hazel Hall ([Location 959](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=959)) - THE THING IS Ellen Bass ([Location 968](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=968)) - IF I CAN STOP ONE HEART FROM BREAKING Emily Dickinson ([Location 981](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=981)) - A DISPLAY OF MACKEREL Mark Doty ([Location 987](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=987)) - A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. —ALBERT EINSTEIN, The World as I See It ([Location 1022](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1022)) - Q & A Kenneth Fearing ([Location 1026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1026)) - each day orphaned in the tide of her own necessity—where ([Location 1047](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1047)) - each day orphaned in the tide of her own necessity ([Location 1077](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1077)) - The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth—never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. —CARL SAGAN ([Location 1156](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1156)) - IT COMES IN EVERY STORM Olga Orozco TRANSLATED BY MARY CROW ([Location 1161](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1161)) - GOD SPEAKS TO EACH OF US AS HE MAKES US Rainer Maria Rilke TRANSLATED BY ANITA BARROWS AND JOANNA MACY ([Location 1189](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1189)) - It is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar. —ANAÏS NIN ([Location 1203](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1203)) - PRAISE SONG FOR THE DAY Elizabeth Alexander A POEM FOR BARACK OBAMA’S PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION ([Location 1206](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1206)) - I have seen greatness and power, wealth, prosperity and incomparable development. I was never sad that we are a small and unfinished part of the world. To be small, unsettled and uncompleted is a good and courageous mission. —KAREL ČAPEK ([Location 1288](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1288)) - REFUGEES Brian Bilston ([Location 1423](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1423)) - KINDNESS Naomi Shihab Nye ([Location 1585](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1585)) - I HAVE NO QUARREL WITH YOU Florence Brooks Whitehouse ([Location 1656](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1656)) - SQUALL Leonora Speyer ([Location 1668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1668)) - STILL I RISE Maya Angelou ([Location 1695](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1695)) - THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS Wendell Berry ([Location 1727](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1727)) - THE DAY IS DONE Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ([Location 1929](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1929)) - Whatever happens to you, you can either see it as a curse and suffer it, or you can see it as a blessing and make use of it. —SADHGURU ([Location 1963](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=1963)) - FROM BLOSSOMS Li-Young Lee ([Location 2036](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=2036)) - FOR THE NEW YEAR, 1981 Denise Levertov ([Location 2068](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=2068)) - BARTER Sara Teasdale ([Location 2081](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=2081)) - There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. —LEONARD COHEN ([Location 2095](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=2095)) - ALWAYS THERE ARE THE CHILDREN Nikki Giovanni ([Location 2097](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=2097)) - If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. —HOWARD ZINN, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress ([Location 2123](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01N256Y5L&location=2123))